Singapore’s M1 offers cloud services to start-ups and SMEs

Singaporean operator M1 is launching a cloud service aimed at the country’s digital start-ups and SMEs.

It will enable them to rapidly develop software-based products and grow their business without hefty up-front infrastructure expenditure, said M1, which is working with VMware on the service.

“We are inspired by the entrepreneurial spirit of made-in-Singapore digital start-ups. We want to help advance their growth ambitions by offering them access to enterprise-grade, best-in-class tools that they may not have the resources to procure independently,” said Alex Tan, M1’s chief innovation officer.

The company, which has mobile and fixed operations, said the service will be an enhancement to its next-generation software-defined data centre (SDDC) portfolio, powered by VMware’s cloud provider programme.

Ron Goh, VMware president for south-east Asia and Korea, said: “As a proud partner of M1’s next generation SDDC, we are confident that this complete network and security virtualisation platform will be a vital infrastructure supporting the business goals of M1’s start-up customers.”

Tan said: “M1 offers an integrated suite of on-demand compute, storage, networking and security services through SDDC. In addition, this will be supplemented by native container support and cloud interoperability, allowing businesses to innovate in best-in-class customer experiences and challenge the status quo.”

M1, in which Axiata is a major shareholder, said Singapore’s digital start-ups face intense competition with not only their peers but global giants arriving at south-east Asia’s shores.

“M1’s extensive local experience and advanced VMware cloud solutions, coupled with Pivotal’s open container platform, will give businesses a competitive advantage to respond to market opportunities and challenges with speed, agility and scale,” the company added.